Background and Perspective

Here is the operative part of our reply to Blake Stowell and the additional questions regarding the code policing issues.

> What Chris Sontag was saying was that "SCO has not identified any current issues with the code that is in the kernel today.

MozillaQuest Magazine: Blake, with all do respect that is not what Chris said in the interview. . . . I think we pretty much have word for word and uncensored what Chris said.

MozillaQuest Magazine: Are you talking about the "official" kernel.org Linux kernel or some other adaptation or hack of the official kernel.org Linux kernel.

MozillaQuest Magazine: Do you mean the kernel code as it exists now or do you mean as of today you have not checked to see if there is any SCO-owned code in the Linux kernel.Or what? Please be precise and specific. :-)

MozillaQuest Magazine: Are you now saying there is SCO-owned code in the kernel.org Linux kernel code? If so specifically what is the SCO-owned code that you now say is in the Linux kernel?

> However, SCO is still concerned that there is no mechanism in place in the Linux community to address what gets added to the kernel, and the periphery of the kernel, to make sure that there is no proprietary software being included.

MozillaQuest Magazine: "software" is an un-acceptably vague term. Do you mean code or binaries? Do you mean kernel code, library code, shell code, OS code, utilities, applications, or what? Please be clear and specific. :-)

MozillaQuest Magazine: "periphery of the kernel" is an un-acceptably vague term. You need to be more specific. Outside the kernel there are many layers -- system call, system C library, the command line interface (CLI) shell, standard internal Unix utilities the OS, applications, external utilities, etc. Please be more specific and please see --

MozillaQuest Magazine: Are you guessing here?

MozillaQuest Magazine: I am somewhat familiar with the process by which code gets added to the kernel.org Linux kernel and I have discussed this particular issue with the kernel.org people. There are measures in place designed to prevent proprietary code from getting into the kernel.org kernel.

MozillaQuest Magazine: Who in the "Linux community" does SCO say should be responsible for policing the whatever you mean by "software" to see that proprietary code is not included?

MozillaQuest Magazine: The Linux kernel and the GNU/Linux operating system are open source and open development. SCO-Caldera has the opportunity to see the code for not only "released" Linux kernel and GNU/Linux OS code but also for that code in its pre-release development. If SCO-Caldera is concerned about SCO-owned code getting into the Linux Kernel and/or the GNU/Linux operating system, why does SCO-Caldera not check that code itself?

MozillaQuest Magazine: Has SCO-Caldera checked to see if any SCO-owned code is in the Linux Kernel and/or the GNU/Linux operating system code?

MozillaQuest Magazine: If so, has SCO-Caldera found any SCO-owned code in the Linux Kernel and/or the GNU/Linux operating system code?

MozillaQuest Magazine: If so, has SCO-Caldera informed kernel.org, gnu.org, and/or anyone else of any SCO-owned code that is in the Linux Kernel and/or the GNU/Linux operating system code?

MozillaQuest Magazine: If so, who and when? What was the response from any such people and organizations?

> Yes, Linus and Alan Cox and others control what gets added to the kernel, but how do they know that what is being contributed is not proprietary? SCO would still like to see this get resolved in some way at some point."

MozillaQuest Magazine: Again, are you guessing here?

MozillaQuest Magazine: Is SCO-Caldera now trying to tell the kernel.org people how they should go about Linux kernel development?

MozillaQuest Magazine: Is SCO-Caldera now trying to tell the gnu.org people how they should go about GNU/Linux development?

MozillaQuest Magazine: Is SCO-Caldera now trying to tell the Linux distribution providers how they should go about Linux distribution development?

MozillaQuest Magazine: Just whom is SCO-Caldera saying should do just what?

MozillaQuest Magazine: Isn't SCO-Caldera really stretching here? Last week Chris Sontag said there is no SCO-owned code in the kernel.org Linux kernel. Now, you come along and try to negate that previous and clear statement and try to suggest that there might be "tainted" code in the kernel.org Linux kernel code.

MozillaQuest Magazine: Isn't SCO-Caldera really stretching here? Your statements/questions strongly suggest that you have little clue as to how the kernel.org goes about developing the Linux kernel -- yet you now want the kernel.org people to subject themselves to SCO-Caldera's supervision of the kernel.org Linux kernel development process.

> I think that this is an important point to include in the article. I don't think that the Linux community can rest easy about the kernel . . .

MozillaQuest Magazine: The issues that you raise here are very important. However, I do not think they constitute a correction. Rather, I think we will do a follow-up story about this. :-)